Clonidine and military kids - Good or bad?

Military families with children are subjecting their kids to a great deal of anxiety when deployment time arrives. To fill the mom- or dad-shaped hole, Army Times reports that more military families than ever are resorting to psychiatric drugs like Clonidine for their children – because for some reason, big feelings need to be feared. This can mirror the number of active-duty servicemen and women who are on psychiatric meds. With so many people using psychiatric the costs of the prescription are sure to rise leaving numerous to seek out personal loans to get them.

Prescribing Clonidine for this

Clonidine is explained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Supposedly the heart rate is decreased while the blood vessels relax with the agent. Many say that the potential side effects of sedation and irritability aren't worth it even though psychiatrists will prescribe Clonidine for autism, anxiety and ADHD.

It doesn't matter what you believe in the debate. The fact that military children are being prescribed the drug much more often is still there. According to the Army Times, there have been a ton of psychiatric drugs given to military children. In fact, in 2009, there were 300,000 given alone. That figure is 18 percent higher than it was in 2005, and the under-18 military family population increased by less than 1 percent over that span. With antipsychotics, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number prescribed. A 40 percent increase has been shown in anti-anxiety drugs like Clonidine though.

Since the Afghanistan war started, there has been a 76 percent increase in the amount of psychiatric medication prescribed for active duty forces.

The roller coaster of deployment and re-integration

Many child psychologists say developing children require structure. Often, these military children have to deal with mom or dad being deployed and then trying to re-integrate causing a lot of stress for the children. A University of California, Los Angeles psychiatrist, Patricia Lester, explained this.

The Rand Corp has done many mental health studies showing that the cycles repeat with a parent's military career. There were 20 percent more pediatric outpatient visits needed by children who also performed worse in school when their parents would go on longer, more frequent deployments. Then there would be more drugs prescribed. Clonidine and anti-psychotics would be prescribed more often.

Psychiatrists who spoke with Army Times expressed concern over the growing trend of psychiatric prescriptions for children, and the increase among military children suggests that perhaps military families are having a difficult time managing.

Information from

armytimes.com/news/2011/01/military-children-taking-more-psychiatric-drugs-010211w/

National Center for Biotechnology Information

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000623

The Clonidine (and other meds) Song

youtube.com/watch?v=U6aI05-E9uI